2022 Chamber Music Composition Competition

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2022 Chamber Music Composition Competition

100 Years of Musical Innovation

In 2022 we are celebrating the centennial of "Pershing's Own" and our national heritage of creativity in American chamber music. With the inauguration of this new competition, we welcome the next century of innovation, diversity, and excellence.

The United States Army Band "Pershing's Own" is proud to announce the winners of its first chamber music composition competition, honoring and showcasing new and recent chamber works by American composers, carrying on a tradition of celebrating excellence for 100 years since the band's formation in 1922. During the pandemic especially, American composers from all walks of life have been creating new chamber music at a blistering pace, more music than can be heard or performed, and we intend to shine a light on such recent works that have gone unnoticed or underrepresented. We are proud of our nation's artistic achievements and are excited to illuminate and showcase them in new ways.

In June 2022, a panel of acclaimed composers and members of the U.S. Army Band "Pershing's Own" reviewed 209 submissions and selected the most exciting and innovative works. Two works were chosen as winners, with three runners up.

Rehearsal and recording of the winning works will begin in February 2023, and by the end of April the Pershing's Own Chamber Players will release a professionally produced video performance of the winning submissions across their social media outlets.

Despite only being able to choose a few pieces to represent on this competition, there were many wonderful works that were reviewed. We look forward to performing from this cache of excellent new American music in seasons to come. We are grateful to all of the applicants, and congratulate you on your artistry!

Meet the Winners

Congratulations to Susanna Hancock and David Clay Mettens, the winners of the inaugural, centennial edition of the Pershing's Own Chamber Music Composition Competition! Check back in mid-April 2023 for video performances of these works and interviews with the composers.

Susanna Hancock

2022 Winner

Susanna Hancock

2022 Winner

Susanna Hancock is an Asian-American composer whose music explores color, process, and acoustic phenomena. Her music draws from a wide array of influences including minimalism, spectralism, math rock, and electronic mediums. Susanna’s compositions have been performed by wildUp, JACK Quartet, ZAFA Collective, Metropolis Ensemble, Desdemona Ensemble, ~Nois Saxophone Quartet, and members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and St. Louis Symphony, among others. Susanna’s work has been recognized by organizations such as ASCAP, New Music USA, and United States Artists, and has been featured in concerts and festivals across the world including the LA Phil’s Noon to Midnight Festival, Bang on a Can Marathon, and Vox Novus/Composers Voice Concert Series, among others. Susanna is co-founder and co-artistic director of Terroir New Music, a concert/event series started in 2017 that pairs the music of living composers with local food and drink. Terroir is focused on fostering meaningful collaborations among creatives in an immediate area and is the coalescence of Susanna’s passion for contemporary music and lifetime of experience in the food service industry. The concepts of terroir and community-building are central tenets of all Susanna’s compositional and creative projects. Susanna holds a Master of Music in Theory & Composition degree from New York University, and Bachelor of Composition and Bassoon Performance degrees from the University of South Florida. Primary teachers have included Julia Wolfe, Michael Gordon, and Baljinder Sekhon.

limbic resonance

by Susanna Hancock

limbic resonance

by Susanna Hancock

Limbic resonance can be described as “a symphony of mutual and internal adaptation.” The premise that humans will subconsciously synchronize with others closest to them is explored here, as musicians gradually move out of hocket to new mechanisms within their instrument families, and then ultimately create uniformity across the ensemble. Each section of this piece is modeled after one facet of a sound amplitude envelope, or ADSR (Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release) and altogether displays a transition from non-pitched sound to wholly sympathetic vibration.

David Mettens

2022 Chamber Competition Winner

David Mettens

2022 Chamber Competition Winner

"The Chicago Tribune has praised the music of David “Clay” Mettens (b.1990) as “a thing of remarkable beauty,” displaying a “sensitive ear for instrumental color.” His recent work seeks to distill the strange and sublime from the familiar. He reflects upon the experience of wonder in music that ranges from rich and sonorous to bright and crystalline, seeking expressive immediacy in lucid forms and dramatic shapes. His work has been recognized with the 2021 Hermitage Prize from the Aspen Music Festival and School, a 2020 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, Ithaca College’s 2018 Heckscher Foundation Composition Prize, first prize in the 2018 Salvatore Martirano Composition Competition, a 2016 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, and the 2015 SCI/ASCAP graduate student commission. He received a commission from the American Opera Initiative for a one-act opera, which was premiered in December 2015 by the Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center, and his orchestral works have been performed by orchestras across the United States and Europe. His music appears on recordings by the Grossman Ensemble (Fountain of Time, 2020), Fuego Quartet (Migration, 2019), Lotus (Rogue Lotus, 2018), and American Wild Ensemble (Music in the American Wild, 2018). Mettens is currently a teaching fellow in the Humanities Division at the University of Chicago, where he finished a PhD in 2021, studying with Anthony Cheung, Sam Pluta, and Augusta Read Thomas. He earned his master's degree at the Eastman School of Music and completed his undergraduate studies at the University of South Carolina with a degree in music composition and a clarinet performance certificate. "

Hollows

by David Clay Mettens

Hollows

by David Clay Mettens

Hollows takes as its subject a sense of separation, distance, and “in-betweenness.” These aspects are dramatized in the music formally as periods of stasis and quiet between active, busy sections, as well as registral separation of the instruments—piccolo and bass clarinet moving in parallel perpetual motion, and bare, wide dyads in the mid-low register of the piano. These two principal ideas alternate over the course of the piece, however, the piccolo and bass clarinet music from the piece’s opening returns each time wispier or more hollowed out than the last. The first repetition is a mercurial, quicksilver solo for clarinet and the second a blurry recollection of the opening with fluttertongue piccolo and tremolo strings. I was interested in framing or contextualizing the static sections between breathless fast music. As a result, the slow music serves as the expressive core of the piece, while also influencing and transforming the fast music until these contrasting moods reach a kind of equilibrium in the coda. Hollows was written for and premiered by the Aspen Contemporary Music Ensemble.

Meet the Runners Up

Congratulations to our runners up, Sean Friar, Saad Haddad, John Liberatore! These composers' works were regarded in the highest esteem by our review panels. Please check out their work! We wish them a huge congratulations on their artistic achievements, and are grateful to become acquainted with their compositions.

Sean Friar

2022 Runner Up

Sean Friar

2022 Runner Up

Composer and pianist Sean Friar grew up in Los Angeles, where his first musical experiences were in rock and blues piano improvisation. His music keeps in touch with the energy and communicative directness of those musical roots, now along with an expansive and exploratory classical sensibility that is “refreshingly new and solidly mature… and doesn’t take on airs, but instead takes joy in the process of discovery [and] in the continual experience of suspense and surprise that good classical music has always championed.” (Slate Magazine).   He regularly composes for ensembles within and outside traditional concert music. His output ranges from works for orchestra and chamber ensembles to a junk car percussion concerto, music for laptop orchestra, and microtonal piano duo. He has received commissions from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic Scharoun Ensemble, American Composers Orchestra, Alarm Will Sound, Ensemble Modern, Cabrillo Festival, New York Youth Symphony, Redlands Symphony, NOW Ensemble, the Eastman Wind Ensemble, the Curtis Institute, and Present Music. His music has been featured at festivals around the world including Aspen, Bang on a Can, Bowdoin, Cabrillo, Carlsbad, GAUDEAMUS, International Young Composers Meeting, NASA, Norfolk, Nuova Consonanza, SONIC, the Venice Biennale, and the World Saxophone Congress. A winner of the Rome Prize, Friar has received awards from Copland House, the Fromm Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Chamber Music America, ASCAP, Composer’s Inc., and New Music USA. His music can be found on labels including New Amsterdam Records, Innova Recordings, Vox Novus, and Crescent Phase Records. In late 2021, his album-length composition for NOW Ensemble, Before and After, was released on New Amsterdam Records. Friar is Assistant Professor of Composition at the Lamont School of Music at the University of Denver. He also directs summer composition programs at the Idyllwild Arts Academy and the Sunset ChamberFest in California. He previously taught composition at the University of Southern California and UCLA. He holds a Ph.D. in Music Composition from Princeton University and undergraduate degrees in Music and Psychology from UCLA. His principal teachers were Paul Chihara, Paul Lansky, Steven Mackey, and Dmitri Tymoczko.

Dynamics

by Sean Friar

Dynamics

by Sean Friar

Dynamics is a concerto for cello and chamber winds, written for cellist Michael Kaufman and commissioned by the wind ensembles of the Eastman School of Music (Mark Scatterday, Director) and University of Georgia Hugh Hodgson School of Music (Cynthia Turner, Director). Each movement sees the cello and ensemble interact in ways inspired by the different sorts of relationship dynamics we have likely all encountered in our daily lives. The explosive first movement, “Swipe,” has the cello “controlling” the wind ensemble, sometimes turning it on and off, sometimes leading it like a marionette. The cello eventually winds up the ensemble so much that it frees itself from the cello and takes on a life of its own. In “Nimbus,” the ethereal second movement, the woodwind instruments form a luminous halo around a fragile, mysterious cello melody that seems to float above all. Most of the woodwind players are asked to play “flutes” made of PVC pipe in this movement, creating an otherworldly soundscape that is in stark contrast to the outer movements. The playful final movement, “Red Flags,” begins in fits and starts, flickering back and forth between explosive, almost cartoonish gestures and more relaxed, Romantic ones. As the movement progresses, these two different musical atmospheres increasingly and uneasily blend with each other, pushing toward a frenetic conclusion.

Saad Haddad

2022 Runner Up

Saad Haddad

2022 Runner Up

Saad Haddad (b. 1992) is a composer that achieves a “remarkable fusion of idioms” (New York Times), most notably in his work exploring the disparate qualities inherent in Western art music and Middle Eastern musical tradition. Recent commissions include a piano concerto for IRCAM and the Orchestre national d’Île-de-France; a clarinet concerto for Kinan Azmeh and the Princeton Symphony; two string quartets for the Lydian and Callisto Quartets; a mixed octet for the International Contemporary Ensemble; and an orchestral work for the Los Angeles Philharmonic.  Mr. Haddad’s orchestral works have been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra, Illinois Philharmonic, Chicago Composers Orchestra, Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, Symphony in C, Hangzhou Philharmonic, UCLA Philharmonia, USC Thornton Symphony, and the symphony orchestras of Albany, Columbus, Milwaukee, New Jersey, Princeton, and Sioux City. He has also received performances by the JACK Quartet, Locrian Chamber Players, Tanglewood Music Festival, and Utah Arts Festival, and his works have been performed abroad in China, Brazil, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, South Korea, Austria, Sweden, and Canada. He is the recipient of the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Barlow Endowment General Commission, S&R Foundation Washington Award Grand Prize, Jerome Fund for New Music grant from the American Composers Forum, Palmer Dixon Award from The Juilliard School, Aaron Copland Residency Award, and multiple awards from ASCAP, BMI, and the Vancouver Chamber Choir. He has been in residence at the Millay Colony for the Arts, Ucross Foundation, Bogliasco Foundation, Studios of Key West, Soundstreams Composer Workshop, Luzerne Music Center, and most recently as Young Concert Artists' 2019–2021 Composer-in-Residence. Saad Haddad holds degrees from Columbia, Juilliard, and the University of Southern California. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and miniature dachshund. saadnhaddad.com

Takht

by Saad Haddad

Takht

by Saad Haddad

Takht (pronounced in one syllable, takht), or ‘ensemble’ in Arabic, describes the typical Middle Eastern musical group that consists of most of the traditional instruments used in Arabic music, including the oud, qanun, kamanjah, ney, riqq, and darbakeh. In a way, the instrumentation for this work is the Western equivalent of that ensemble, employing one of each of the most commonly used instruments in the full symphony orchestra. Some of the instruments even overlap between the groups; for example the ‘ney’ is similar to the flute in construction, while the ‘kamanjah’ sounds very much like the violin. An ongoing muse in my output thus far is the voice of arguably the most famous Egyptian singer who ever lived, Umm Kulthum (1898–1975), the “Star of the East.” In this particular work, her voice, in a sense, is brought back to life as the woodwinds, brass, and harp instrumentalists literally sing and play into their instruments, transforming the hall into an abstract depiction of Umm Kulthum’s permeating presence in the lives of millions of people that continue to adore her today.

John Liberatore

2022 Chamber Competition Runner Up

John Liberatore

2022 Chamber Competition Runner Up

John Liberatore is a composer, pianist, and one of the world’s few glass harmonica players.  Described by critics as “enchanting” and “truly magical” (Boston and New York Classical Review, respectively), his music seeks poignancy through levity, ambiguity through transparency, and complexity within simple textures—“to feel pulled along at varying speeds in multiple directions, but always forward.” (clevelandclassical.com ) Over the past several years, his music has received hundreds of performances in venues around the world.  He is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship from the MacDowell Colony, and other fellowships from Tanglewood, Yaddo, the Brush Creek Arts Foundation, the I-Park Artist’s Enclave, and the Millay Colony.  Other notable distinctions include commissions from the Fromm Music Foundation and the American Opera Initiative, two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards, and the Brian Israel Prize.  Through a 2012 Presser Music Award, he studied in Tokyo with Jo Kondo—a mentorship that made an indelible impression on his music. In 2015, Liberatore commissioned glass blowers G. Finkenbeiner Inc. for a new glass harmonica, becoming one of the few exponents of this rare instrument in contemporary music.  So far, he has collaborated as a composer and performer with Roomful of Teeth, percussionist Daniel Druckman, soprano Jamie Jordan, the Concert Choir of Old Saint Patrick’s, and as a soloist at the Third Practice Festival. In 2018, Albany Records released “Line Drawings,” a portrait album of Liberatore’s chamber music.  The album features Liberatore’s recording debut on the glass harmonica (alongside Druckman and Jordan), as well as pieces for The Mivos Quartet, pianist Ryan MacEvoy McCullough, Bent Frequency, and Duo Damiana.  Other recordings of his work are available on Centaur, Innova, and Ravello record labels. He holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music (PhD, MM) and Syracuse University (BM, summa cum laude).  He serves as Associate Professor of Music Composition and Theory at the University of Notre Dame, where he has taught since 2015.

A Very Star-Like Start

by John Liberatore

A Very Star-Like Start

by John Liberatore

"a very star-like start" is a short capriccio. Though the piece is written for eight instruments, the persistent voice crossing, hocketing, and transparency of texture may make the ensemble seem much smaller. I completed the work at the Millay Colony, an artist's retreat founded by the estate of Edna St. Vincent Millay and housed on her property in Upstate NY. The title comes from Robert Frost’s description of fireflies in the garden, a common sight on the Millay Colony grounds. The quote in fuller context reads: “Here come real stars to fill the upper skies, And here on earth come emulating flies, That though they never equal stars in size, (And they were never really stars at heart) Achieve at times a very star-like start. Only, of course, they can't sustain the part.” Though the title came at the end of the compositional process, as it often does, the poem helps me understand something about the piece I've created. First, the mosaic construction of this piece resembles a field a fireflies. Each instrument winks in and out sight, creating composite lines and textures that no instrument creates on its own. On a deeper level, Frost articulates something essential about human expression.

Meet the Guest Review Panel

These esteemed composers reviewed our 48 semi-finalist submissions. We received 209 submissions from Americans living in 41 states, Puerto Rico, and four other countries!

Anthony Green

Freelance composer, pianist

Anthony Green

Freelance composer, pianist

The creative output of Anthony R. Green (b. 1984; composer, performer, social justice artist) includes musical and visual creations, interpretations of original works or works in the repertoire, collaborations, educational outreach, and more. Behind all of his artistic endeavors are the ideals of equality and freedom, which manifest themselves in diverse ways in a composition, a performance, a collaboration, or social justice work. As a composer, his works have been presented in over 25 countries across six continents by various internationally acclaimed soloists and ensembles, including : vocalists Julian Otis, Anna Elder, and Amanda DeBoer Bartlett; violists Ashleigh Gordon, Gregory Williams, and Carrie Frey; pianists Stephen Drury, Kathleen Supové, Jason Hardink, Kimi Kawashima, and Eunmi Ko, percussionists Bill Solomon, Michael Skillern, and Dame Evelyn Glennie; and ensembles Tenth Intervention (Hajnal Pivnick – violin, and Adam Tendler – piano),ALEA III (with Gunther Schuller, conductor), the Thalea String Quartet, counter) induction, Ensemble Dal Niente, Dinosaur Annex, and Play, Transient Canvas, the McCormick Percussion Group, the American Composers Orchestra, the Playground Ensemble, Ossia New Music Ensemble, and Alarm Will Sound, to name a few. He has received commissions from the Fromm Foundation, Celebrity Series Boston, Chamber Music Tulsa, Access Contemporary Music, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, NOISE-BRIDGE, and other soloists and ensembles. As a performer, he has appeared at venues in the US, Cyprus, France, the Netherlands, the UK, Israel, Germany, Switzerland, Turkey, South Korea, and Ghana. Green is also co-founder of Castle of our Skins: celebrating Black artistry through music.

Osnat Netzer

Faculty, DePaul School of Music

Osnat Netzer

Faculty, DePaul School of Music

Osnat Netzer /osˈnat ˈnts/ is a composer, performer, and educator. Osnat creates her compositions collaboratively, tailoring her work to the performer’s sensibilities, physicality, and improvisational inclinations. She takes inspiration from cognitive linguistics and in dialogue with the embodied experience of physical forces, such as potential and kinetic energy, resulting in compositions rich in musical languages and connected to the fulsome pursuit of tension and relaxation. Born in Haifa, Israel, Netzer studied composition and piano at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, where her primary composition teacher was Menachem Zur. She came to the United States in 2003 for graduate studies in composition with Robert Cuckson at Mannes School of Music and continued her studies with Lee Hyla at New England Conservatory, earning her doctorate in 2011. In 2019, she joined the faculty of DePaul University as an Assistant Professor of Composition and Musicianship. Netzer’s works have been commissioned and performed by Ensemble Dal Niente, ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble), Patchwork, mezzo-soprano Lucy Dhegrae, bass David Salsbery Fry, saxophonists Kenneth Radnofsky, Doug O’Connor, and Geoffrey Landman, Spektral Quartet, and Winsor Music, among many others, published by Edition Peters and earthsongs, and recorded on Bridge Records and New Focus Recordings. Her opera, The Wondrous Woman Within, was described as “riotously funny” in The New York Times when its first scene was performed at New York City Opera’s VOX festival in 2012 and “challenging and fascinating” by critic Amir Kidron when it received its World Premiere in a sold-out run at Tel Aviv’s Cameri Theatre in 2015. As a pianist and performer, she regularly plays and conducts new music by fellow composers and her own songs and compositions. Also a committed and passionate educator, Netzer teaches at DePaul School of Music and has served on the faculties of The Walden School, New England Conservatory, Longy School of Music of Bard College, and Harvard University. For more information on Osnat Netzer, please visit www.osnatnetzer.com.

Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez

Faculty, Eastman School of Music

Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez

Faculty, Eastman School of Music

Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez was born in Mexico City in 1964 and now lives in the New York tundra, where he is a Professor of Composition at the Eastman School of Music. He studied with Jacob Druckman, Martin Bresnick, Steven Mackey and Henri Dutilleux at Yale, Princeton and Tanglewood, respectively. He has received many of the standard awards in the field (e.g. Barlow Prize, Guggenheim, Fulbright, Koussevitzky, Fromm, American Academy of Arts and Letters.) He likes machines with hiccups and spiders with missing legs, looks at Paul Klee's Notebooks everyday, and tries to use the same set of ears to listen to Bach, Radiohead, or Ligeti.

Dan Tepfer

Freelance composer, pianist

Dan Tepfer

Freelance composer, pianist

One of his generation’s extraordinary talents, Dan Tepfer has earned an international reputation as a pianist-composer of wide-ranging ambition, individuality, and drive—one “who refuses to set himself limits” (France’s Télérama). The New York City-based Tepfer, born in 1982 in Paris to American parents, has recorded and performed around the world with some of the leading lights in jazz and classical music, from Lee Konitz to Renée Fleming, and released ten albums of his own in solo, duo and trio formats. Tepfer earned global acclaim for his 2011 release Goldberg Variations / Variations, a disc that sees him performing J.S. Bach’s masterpiece as well as improvising upon it—to “elegant, thoughtful and thrilling” effect (New York magazine). Tepfer’s newest video album, Natural Machines, stands as one of his most ingeniously forward-minded yet, finding him exploring in real time the intersection between science and art, coding and improvisation, digital algorithms and the rhythms of the heart. The New York Times has called him “a deeply rational improviser drawn to the unknown.” During the Covid pandemic, his belief that music brings people together in times of crisis led him to dive headstrong into live-streaming, performing close to two hundred online concerts from his home for a devoted community of listeners. As part of this effort, he pioneered ultra-low-latency audio technology enabling him to perform live through the internet with musicians in separate locations, culminating in the development of his own app, FarPlay. Tepfer has composed for various ensembles beyond jazz. His piano quintet Solar Spiral was premiered in 2016 at Chicago’s Ravinia Festival, with Tepfer performing alongside the Avalon String Quartet. Tepfer has received commissions from the Prague Castle Guard Orchestra for two works: the suite Algorithmic Transform(2015) and a concerto for symphonic wind band and improvising piano, The View from Orohena (2010). In summer 2019, Tepfer unveiled his jazz-trio arrangement of Stravinsky’s Baroque-channeling Pulcinella. Tepfer’s honors include first prizes at the 2006 Montreux Jazz Festival Solo Piano Competition, the 2006 East Coast Jazz Festival Competition, and the 2007 American Pianists Association Jazz Piano Competition, as well as fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2014), the MacDowell Colony (2016), and the Fondation BNP-Paribas (2018).

Meet our Competition Advisor

In launching a new national competition, we sought expert input and perspective from a respected composer and educator who has organized many calls for scores: few are as accomplished, experienced, and effective in this regard as Dr. Baljinder Sekhon. His advice was critical in shaping a fair, inclusive, organized competition that yielded great results. From Pershing's Own: thank you, Dr. Sekhon!

Baljinder Sekhon

Faculty, Penn State University

Baljinder Sekhon

Faculty, Penn State University

“Clearly knowing the power of sonority” (Philadelphia Inquirer), the music of Baljinder Sekhon has been presented in over 500 concerts in twenty countries. From works for large ensemble to solo works to electronic music, Sekhon’s demonstrate a wide range of interests and styles. Sekhon’s compositions for saxophone and percussion instruments are widely recognized as pioneering work in those genres with numerous presentations, CD recordings, and guest lecture appearances. The U.S. Army Band “Pershing’s Own” presented a portrait concert of Sekhon’s chamber music in Arlington, VA, in March 2017. Also in 2017, his saxophone works were presented at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage and at the EurSax2017 Conference. His recent Double Percussion Concerto and his choral work There Are No Words were both premiered at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium Perelman Stage. His recent orchestral work The Offering is a 22-minute, three-movement concerto for saxophone and orchestra that received its premiere by saxophonist Doug O’Connor and the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra. His work Civil Variations for orchestra was performed at the Albany Symphony’s American Music Festival in 2015 and Ancient Dust, also for orchestra, was premiered at the Cabrillo Festival for Contemporary Music (Marin Alsop, director) where it was described as “still and mysterious, animated, haunting and peaceful” by the Epoch Times. In 2009, Sekhon composed a voice and chamber orchestra work for Grammy-nominated soprano Tony Arnold. Musica Nova premiered the resulting work, Post, under the direction of acclaimed conductor Brad Lubman. Recent commissions include Sekhon’s involvement in the Global Premiere Consortium Commissioning Project, which resulted in his work Sonata of Puzzles for the top saxophonists around the world. Consortium members for this project include Artur Mendes, Tim McAllister, Dale Underwood, Connie Frigo, Chien-Kwan Lin, John Sampen, Jérôme Laran, Seung-Dong Lee, Douglas Braga, Clifford Leaman, and Yo Matsushita, among more than forty other saxophonists. In addition, over forty percussionists recently joined together to commission Passageways, a solo steel pan and percussion ensemble work, The Passageways commission was initiated by percussionist David Gerhart who served as the soloist for the work’s premiere in 2015 with the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras Percussion Ensemble. Most recently, Sekhon completed a new work for solo marimba entitled Distances, commissioned by Michael Burritt and a large consortium of soloists. Additional platforms for the performance of Sekhon’s music have included the Seoul Arts Center, Piccolo Spoleto Festival, National Orchestra Institute, The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, the Paris Conservatory, MATA’s Interval Series, New World Symphony’s Musician Forum Series, the World Saxophone Congress, International Viola Congress, Juventas New Music Ensemble, the Percussive Arts Society International Convention, Bang On a Can Festival, Root Signals Electronic Music Festival, Stallenbosch International Chamber Music Festival (South Africa), and a full concert of his works at John Zorn’s contemporary art space The Stone. Several commercial recordings of Sekhon’s music have been released, including two by the McCormick Percussion Group (USA), a recording of Drifting Seeds by the Couloir Duo (Canada), Bunker by the Evolution Duo (Netherlands), Compass by the Juventas New Music Ensemble on New Dynamic Records, Gradient by the Heisler/Yeh duo on AMP Records, Double Percussion Concerto by the USF Wind Ensemble on Mark Records, Gradient by Jerome Laran on Klarthe Records (France), Regeneration by Phillip O’Banion on BCM&D Records, and Sonata of Puzzles by Artur Mendes (Portugal) and by Adam Estes on Albany Records (USA). Sheet music of Sekhon's works is available internationally from Keyboard Percussion Publications, Glass Tree Press, Steve Weiss Music, Le Vent Music (Taiwan), AvA Musical Editions (Europe), and Southern Percussion (UK). A portrait CD of Sekhon’s music, featuring the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, line upon line percussion trio, guitarist Dieter Hennings, and the McCormick Percussion Group will be released on Innova Records in 2018. Sekhon serves as Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of South Florida where he received a 2017 Outstanding Undergraduate Teacher award, he and holds the PhD and MA from the Eastman School of Music where he is a three-time recipient of the Howard Hanson Orchestral prize and served as president of the highly acclaimed OSSIA New Music Ensemble. Sekhon also holds a BM from the University of South Carolina. Additional honors include the Wayne Brewster Barlow Prize, New Music USA’s Composer Assistance Grant, Audio Inversions, Percussive Arts Society Composition Competition, Brian M. Israel Prize, Boehmler Foundation Commission, Met Life Creative Connections Grant, Belle Gitelman Prize, Barbara B. Smith Prize, multiple awards from ASCAP including the Morton Gould Young Composer Award (2006), and he was named the MTNA/FSMTA Commissioned Composer of 2012. His numerous appearances as a percussionist include those at the L.A. Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series in Walt Disney Hall, Festival Spazio Musica in Cagliari, Italy, and at the Bang On a Can Marathon in New York City.

Panel Review Methodology

Submissions are reviewed in three stages:

A preliminary panel of musicians and composers at Pershing's Own will review applications for eligibility and rules compliance. If the remaining submissions total at more than 50, a cursory quality review will reduce the pool to no more than 50.

An external review panel of four esteemed composers—unaffiliated with the military, but representative of American compositional prowess—will review the entries for the highest quality compositions.

As a diversity of compositional styles are welcome, one of the panelists will be a composer with expertise in jazz and/or commercial music.

They will adjudicate according to their own personal compositional value systems, adhering to a 0-3 numerical ranking system. Their results will be numerically tallied without discussion; the panel will not discuss works with each other except in the event that their numerical rankings do not yield a consensus. This panel will make a recommendation to Pershing's Own for the best quality compositions of the field.

Out of the external review panel's consensus recommendations, a final panel of Pershing's Own musical leadership will determine which works to schedule for video recording. These will be declared the winner(s) and the remaining recommendations will be honored as runners up. Our ensemble's pragmatic ability to learn, execute, and record the work well is a factor in this final review.

Eligibility

Carefully review the requirements below for submission eligibility. Then, please feel free to apply with your best submission or inquire further at the contact information near the bottom.

Composer Eligibility Requirements:

Must be a citizen or permanent resident of the United States of America.
There is no age limit, but composers should be in the earlier stages of their careers (if in doubt: apply).
By submitting, composers waive their synchronization rights for US Army Band "Pershing's Own" video performances of the submitted work.
If chosen, composer agrees to participate in video interviews to support our production of their work.

Submission Eligibility Requirements:

Submitted works must not already be recorded by a major ensemble or available on a commercial record release.
Works should be composed within the most recent 15 years (on or after May 17th, 2007)
Parts must be ready and deliverable by August 1st, 2022.
Maximum of 1 (ONE) submission per composer.
Diverse styles of music are welcome for consideration, to include jazz or traditional music. The external review panel will have at least one jazz/commercial music composer. See section below on review methodology.
Works submitted should be primarily acoustic in nature, but electronic components are welcome. It is strongly recommended that composers submitting works with electronic aspects inquire ahead of time to be certain that we have the capability of translating the intended effect well over a videorecording.
Between 3-15 players. Standard doublings are acceptable (i.e. clarinet/bass clarinet). Here is a list of the types of instrumentalists available at Pershing's Own:
- Flute/piccolo/alto flute
- Oboe/English horn
- Bassoon
- Clarinet (alto/bass/Bb/A/Eb)
- Saxophones (SATB available)
- Trumpet/cornet/flugelhorn
- French Horn
- Trombone & Euphonium
- Tuba
- Violin
- Viola
- Cello
- Harp
- Percussion (inquire for specifics)
- Drum set
- Bass (acoustic or electric)
- Piano / Keyboards
- Guitar (all types, acoustic, electric, banjo, mandolin, etc.)
- Voice (all styles and ranges)
- Electronics (please inquire for specifics before applying)

Contact

Please direct all questions to Sergeant First Class Doug O'Connor, NCOIC of the Chamber Music Series and competition coordinator, at douglas.h.oconnor.mil@army.mil.

Email SFC O'Connor

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2022 Chamber Music Composition Competition

100 Years of Musical Innovation

Meet the Winners

Susanna Hancock

2022 Winner

Susanna Hancock

2022 Winner

limbic resonance

by Susanna Hancock

limbic resonance

by Susanna Hancock

David Mettens

2022 Chamber Competition Winner

David Mettens

2022 Chamber Competition Winner

Hollows

by David Clay Mettens

Hollows

by David Clay Mettens

Meet the Runners Up

Sean Friar

2022 Runner Up

Sean Friar

2022 Runner Up

Dynamics

by Sean Friar

Dynamics

by Sean Friar

Saad Haddad

2022 Runner Up

Saad Haddad

2022 Runner Up

Takht

by Saad Haddad

Takht

by Saad Haddad

John Liberatore

2022 Chamber Competition Runner Up

John Liberatore

2022 Chamber Competition Runner Up

A Very Star-Like Start

by John Liberatore

A Very Star-Like Start

by John Liberatore

Meet the Guest Review Panel

Anthony Green

Freelance composer, pianist

Anthony Green

Freelance composer, pianist

Osnat Netzer

Faculty, DePaul School of Music

Osnat Netzer

Faculty, DePaul School of Music

Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez

Faculty, Eastman School of Music

Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez

Faculty, Eastman School of Music

Dan Tepfer

Freelance composer, pianist

Dan Tepfer

Freelance composer, pianist

Meet our Competition Advisor

Baljinder Sekhon

Faculty, Penn State University

Baljinder Sekhon

Faculty, Penn State University

Panel Review Methodology

Submissions are reviewed in three stages:

Eligibility

Composer Eligibility Requirements:

Submission Eligibility Requirements:

Contact

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